Megan gives advice:
You really don't want to be the high-cost provider in a deflationary environment--at least, not as long as wages remain sticky. It's also less broadly distributed, centering itself near relatively affluent areas. In most cases, that's a good place to be. But so far, the recession has taken a disproportionate toll on those with substantial assets.And more advice:
Being the high cost provider of a rapidly depreciating luxury good is not the market niche you want in a global financial crunch.I just can't understand why she isn't running, say, Circuit City, rather than passing this astounding business acumen around for nothing. Can you? (Hint: Probably not altruism.)
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16 comments:
Have you seen her latest crusade? It's against Johns Hopkins, the Iraqi Medical College, and the Lancet.
She believes the "American Association for Public Opinion Research*" can make definitive judgments about the Iraq study - namely that it's worthless and unprofessional - because Burnham didn't give them answers to all their questions about how the epidemiology study was carried out.
So no, she can't get a real job. All she can do is keep carrying Michael Kelly's coat. Pity they didn't bury it with him, and give her the choice of clinging to it or not as they shoveled the earth onto it.
*An organization of "academic pollsters and commercial research firms." The JH/IMC team is not in the same field of endeavor, would and could never be members, and probably had never heard of AAPOR. In fairness to AAPOR's self-perceived "balance," they "formally reprimanded" Luntz in 1997:
In 1997, Luntz was formally reprimanded by the American Association for Public Opinion Research for his work polling on the GOP's 1994 "Contract with America" campaign document.
Luntz told the media that everything in the contract had the support of at least 60 percent of the general public. Considering the elementary phrasing of that document (stop violent criminals, protect our kids, strong national defense), it seems almost laughably uncontroversial. But one of AAPOR's 1,400 members wasn't so amused, and filed a complaint requesting to see Luntz's research and a verification of the figure.
Luntz's response? He couldn't reveal the information because of client confidentiality.
"None of those people have ever worked for a private client," Luntz says now. When told that some members of AAPOR do actually work in the private sector, he replied: "Then they should understand about confidentiality."
In fact, Luntz says, the AAPOR slap had a surprising effect. "Look, I shouldn't say this," he says, "but I made money off that incident. People basically said, 'If you're willing to go through that to honor your commitment, I want to work with you.'"
...
"We understand the need for confidentiality, but once a pollster makes results public, the information needs to be public. People need to be able to evaluate whether it was sound research."
Warren Mitofsky, the current standards chair at AAPOR, says the complaint against Luntz was a rarity. There are only one or two complaints filed against pollsters each year and they hardly ever go as far as Luntz's.
Of course, critics of the AAPOR complaint note that the group is not really the domain of political pollsters. The group's membership mostly includes academic pollsters and commercial research firms.
http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/05/26/luntz/index.html
Founder brad, who has enough brainpower to deal w/ endless, meaningless phrases & jargon may be posting on that mess soon.
I thought that the 'wingers loved themselves some marginal analysis--by the usual standard the rich have suffered less of a real "toll" because each dollar lost means less to those who burn $100 bills for display than it does for those for whom a $100 is the budget for the month. Shorter MM--The rich are always getting persecuted. Fuck her
While your careers as Official Megan McArdle stalker-biographers are quite inspiring, why don't you do something with your lives that actually helps people in this world? Become nurses or fire-fighters or something, because you seem to have time for a second job (assuming you've bothered to get a first job. And if you're unemployed, but are still keeping this blog, then you obviously haven't). Because if you think that "liberal values" entail lazying around the computer for many hours each day, obsessively searching for the latest dirt on your nemesis, then you people are just useless contributors of CO2 emissions and trash overflow, and would be better off to society by just disappearing out of existence.
Aw, how cute. McArdle has a supporter whith nothing to do but hunt down and criticize people on the internet. While telling them to stop hunting down and criticizing people on the internet.
Unless it's McArdle herself, which would be *really* funny.
Dude, I spent 2 minutes. I work with patients 12-16 hours a day in a hospital. You spend your lives doing this shit. Your predictable rebuttal amounts to "I know you are, but what am I."
And yet you come home and do this--don't you have something better to do after an all day shift?
It's so strange to see people cheer on war and death for eight years, and find them still applauding their authority figures after their massive failures. It's why it was so easy for the government to lie us into war and recession.
I've got to give it to you for consistancy, however.
Someone has a big crush on Megan. Dude, you should totally bring her a new crockpot. She will love you long time.
(by the way, that took ten seconds to write, so I have time to cure cancer and teach orphans conversational French in the rest of the day)
Oh please, Anonymous. The posts here are flippant and rarely take more than a couple of minutes to compose. The page is updated maybe twice a day, between several contributors. I stop in for about ten minutes total per week. Nobody is "spending their life" on this site drummed up from idiot-proof freeware. You have no idea how people here spend the other 23 hours and thirty minutes of their days. If you think this site is useless, don't read it.
But it's always nice to meet smug people who conclude they're better than someone else based on assumptions gleaned from a fucking blog that anyone with half a brain can tell doesn't require a huge amount of effort to produce.
Finally, I get to see a flame thread at FMM.
Anonymous, some of us save lives and have honorable jobs. My girl works in a hospital and she lives lives. I used to buy servers for Lehman Brothers. Not as important, but it was a fine day job.
This site is maintained by very smart people who have day jobs. And in their spare time they criticize McArdle for her day job as a 'Libertarian Econo-blogger.' Your criticism seems a bit more fit for your favorite tall, Irish-American writer.
Anyway, I wanted to comment on this McArdle quote:
But so far, the recession has taken a disproportionate toll on those with substantial assets.
So her argument is that shareholders and investors are the ones who have been hit hardest. In terms of virtual money, that is correct.
Tidbit time - I work at a rock and mineral store in NYC that is going under. The owners personally know the Weill family (of Citigroup fame). Every day, I hear them tell clients and debt collectors that the Weill family has 'lost missions,' and has fallen on 'hard times.' Sandy Weill's son has secluded himself at home, is depressed, and is likely off the wagon. Sandy was photographed taking the family to Cabo on the Citigroup corporate jet (which is/was part of his retirement package), and the headline in the February 1st NY Post was 'Pigs Fly.'
So yes, we get it. A lot of stock is now worthless. Pity the billionaires.
But this recession is being measured not in the falling value of stock, or even the stock market averages. It is being measured in the millions of full-time jobs being lost. And as Sadly No posted on Friday night, that number is both staggering and showing no signs of flattening.
Megan has shown a pattern of arguing that she and those wealthier than her lose the most during recessions. Up is down and black is white.
To be fair, CP, Anonymous also feels smug and superior because apparently anyone else who has significant amounts of free time is a selfish monster who deserves to die.
What scares me about McArdle is, she's just a spokesbot for an entire mentality - pretty much the farthest extension of the Marketing mentality - that if you go through the motions and make the right noises, the capitalist microeconomic prosperity cargo will come. It goes without saying that a majority of true believers who follow the rituals will assure the success of your macroeconomy. And those people run a lot of our world.
Eventually, the faithful lose touch entirely with the tenets of the faith, but the myths and rituals last much, much longer.
Circuit City had to live with real-world stuff and so far McArdle hasn't. Literally getting her fired would do her soul enormous good.
It's interesting that anonymous thinks that the people who ruined the economy for the rest of us are the contributors to society, and the people who point out the theft and its enablers are the parasites.
Stupid, but interesting.
Anon, it really doesn't take much effort to point out Megan's professional failings. If anything we're quite obviously slackers here, often falling a week behind our muse's output.
I'm not sure what you think this site has to do with promoting liberal values, but hey, if you get a dose of self-righteousness out of all this your purpose is served, right?
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